bout de papier, Vol. 24, No. 2 (2009) — Spring 2009 // Printemps 2009, pp. 20–21
From the start it was unlikely that Dwight would have a colourless or even conventional life. The environment in which he was born nudged him in other directions. Largely the creation of his paternal grandfather, George Taylor Fulford, the hugely successful manufacturer of “Pink Pills for Pale People” which sold widely across the world and especially in Asia. Fulford senior was also a friend of Sir Wilfred Laurier and a Liberal Senator. He never advertised it, but in an unguarded moment, Dwight admitted to friends that his godfather was Mackenzie King.
Dwight’s early years were spent in his grandfather’s enormous “beaux arts” style mansion, “Fulford Place,” on the edge of the St. Lawrence at Brockville, with the 138-foot family steam yacht berthed nearby. Brought up by a Swiss nanny, he saw his mother on Thursday afternoons. He was sent to Trinity College, in Port Hope, for high school and, after the University of Toronto, he studied at Oxford. Patrician upbringing equipped him with confidence and a curiosity about the world, but he was spared hubris and never, in the almost 50 years that I knew him, attached special value to social station — unless it was the notion that “with position comes responsibility.” His philanthropy was not the “hands-off” signing of cheques (although there were cheques), but a “hands-on” direct engagement with people, especially young people in need of help. This dimension of his life took shape with his marriage to Barbara Screaton, whom he met at the University of Toronto debating club. In addition to their own family of six children, their house in Ottawa and their houses in different parts of the world were full of strays — invited in usually because they had no where else to go.
My first experience of this special Fulford benevolence was in Havana. Dwight was there at the time of the missile crisis. I arrived a little later in 1963 and on each of my frequent invitations to their home was amazed by the profusion of kids and dogs parading in and out of the doors and windows. Most of the kids and dogs did not belong to them. On weekends, this hodgepodge plus picnic supplies were packed into their station wagon for a day at the beach. Across the street from this ménage lived the First Secretary of the French Embassy and his wife. Watching preparations for another expedition, the First Secretary was heard sighing to his wife “Ahh, les Fulford — le cirque ambulant”. Dwight and Barbara, with persistence and well-targeted political contacts, managed to facilitate the emigration to Canada of several Cuban families, who were being stripped of their livelihoods — using yet other friends and contacts to help these families set up in Ottawa.
It was the same story in Mexico, Dwight’s next posting. Among a host of other initiatives, they funded their cook’s son through schools and university to a medical degree — which he used to set up a clinic in a Mexico City slum.
Telephoning the Fulford house in Ottawa, you could never be sure who was answering the phone. The accents were Haitian, Somalian, Cuban, Chinese, Argentine, Rwandan, Palestinian and so on. We know because of phone calls over the years, and especially during the time when our younger son was invited to join the elastic Fulford family for his final year at Lisgar — we had gone on posting.
Dwight managed to combine consummate professionalism with humanitarian engagement. In some postings this was a difficult bridge to cross. As Ambassador in Buenos Aires when the Argentine military government was committing human rights atrocities he met with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo whose children had been abducted (and subsequently murdered) by the regime. These issues were important also to Barbara, a psychotherapist specializing in trauma among child refugees.
Twenty-five years later some of the Mothers still recall an Ambassador who cared. When the same government invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982 and Canada endorsed the British response, the prickly Foreign Minister declared Ambassador Fulford persona non-grata. Without making a fuss, Dwight left to visit Uruguay — a country where he was accredited as non-resident ambassador — which lies just across the river. Quietly returning to Buenos Aires a week later, the whole PNG episode was forgotten. His other nonresident accreditation was Paraguay, a country whose grim and often comic eccentricities fascinated him.
Mr. Pulford was twice a Director General in the Department. His last post abroad was Ambassador to Saudi Arabia — an appropriate assignment as he had become an energy expert. On retirement he was regularly on call for election observer missions in remote and often inhospitable corners of Latin America and Africa.
His interests were pursued with thoroughness and brio. On a day designated for combatting pollution, Dwight came to work by kayak. Setting off from his home on the Rideau and portaging to the canal, he paddled downtown, pulling his boat from the water by the old train station, and leaving it dripping in a stairwell of the Langevin Block — then an extension of External Affairs.
No account of Dwight could be complete without a description of how and with what he filled his house. The books: Dwight had an insatiable appetite for learning. Shelves multiplied and Barbara grimaced as year by year shipments from specialist book sellers and Amazon.com filled the few remaining cavities in their large house. One of his very occasional complaints about the short time that his doctors had forecast for him was that there would be a whole shelf of books that he would never be able to read. Each room glows with colour from hangings, paintings and indigenous artifacts. On airlines that didn’t mind (before 2001) and in places like Mogadishu, Aden, Oaxaca, Addis Ababa, and Bombay, Dwight would clamber aboard clutching a rhinoceros in alabaster, a Mexican dragon, a saint carved in wood and spectacular masks. The most impressive of these purchases was made during a trip to China two years ago. Visiting the famous archeological site of the Qin Emperor (221-210 BC) Dwight found a local entrepreneur selling replicas in terra-cotta of a larger than life-size Chinese general. The price included shipment across the globe and the general was soon enroute to Canada. Aghast when first informed, Barbara eventually succumbed to the charms of the general who took up residence in the Fulford living room. At the feet of the eight-foot high soldier are appropriately clustered some of Barbara’s own sculptures, furry rodent and feline-like beasts in clay.
Dwight faced death not only with courage, but with a surprisingly imperturbable sense of humour. Seven days before he died, he was still exchanging quasi-indelicate jokes by email. His demeanour in these last weeks was of a person who knew that he had had a good run.
Mr. Fulford leaves his wife Barbara, children Wilder, Martha, Benjamin, Daniel, Adam and Sarah and six grandchildren.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 24, No. 2 (2009) — Spring 2009 // Printemps 2009, pp. 20–21. Read the rest of this issue →
